Oh! And I totally forgot to mention: if you like classical music, the CSO does tons of $10 student tickets (and $15 rush tickets). The Lyric Opera also has a student mailing list that periodically offers $20 tickets, though you have to sign up for it.

Seriously, do this. They wouldn't register me for winter classes until after the quarter started (I went anyway, but it was really annoying).

Yes. Get the shots and, more importantly, make sure that the form is incredibly legible AND the health people at UChicago receive it all. I got all my shots, but they refused to acknowledge one of them since apparently the date my doctor wrote was "not clearly legible." I eventually had to get a second shot just for the sake of their records.

My Bigelow 1L year was my pediatrician's daughter. I had no problems with my shot records

The school has been very careful to avoid giving any impression that they are officially backing Obama. They wouldn't let us even post the FedSoc "Should Conservatives Support Obama" podcast on the faculty blog.

Boo. But why didn't it make it onto the student events podcast? It was obviously a student event.

How come no SCOTUS Justices come to Chicago? IIRC Breyer came about two years ago but nothing since then. Y had 3, H had 2, S&NYU had 1, etc. It seems Columbia is getting zero SCOTUS love as well. Scalia went to Thomas Jefferson law school (I'm not even sure if this is a real law school) but not here. What's up with that?

Did any of you choose Chicago over NYU? If so, can you elaborate on why? I'm struggling to make the decision...

(I posted this in the "Ask Totally Fun Chicago 1Ls..." thread too)

Have you visited both schools? For me, the decision came down to Chicago vs. Columbia. For some reason, both times I visited NYU (both on my own and at their ASW), I got a really bad vibe off the place. There really wasn't anything specific, I just didn't like it. On the other hand, really liked Columbia.

The only specific thing I would point you to is to make sure you get a realistic cost of attendance. When I visited, they took us on a tour of the NYU dorms. We walked into a tiny two-bedroom shoebox in D'Ag, and the girl inside kind of sheepishly said "Well, this is the cheapest one; you can get something bigger if you're willing to spend a bit more money." I asked her how much it cost, and she said something like $1300 a month. Then I asked "Well, how are you affording even the cheapest one? The student budget for housing is only $1250 a month," and she responded "You can basically ignore that student budget. It is totally ridiculous."

Can I ask why there are so many Mormons at UofC? I was looking through the Glass Menagerie they sent admits and it seems that a far greater proportion of students come from Utah or BYU than one might predict given the state's population. Are LDSers overrepresented at all law schools? All T14 law schools? (Virginia seemed to have quite a robust student organization for Mormons, too.) Why do so many Mormons want to be lawyers, anyway? It doesn't seem like there's a straight-up cultural explanation like Talmudic study for Jews... not that that explanation is sufficient either, but at least there's some logic to it.

Of the top law schools, Chicago has an environment that is particularly friendly to families. You can get a reasonably sized apartment for wife/kids relatively cheap and there is a decent elementary school in the area. I think it is probably just a better mormon lifestyle fit than most of the peer schools.